


ouranos, the magician.

by dickovny



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Astrology, Car Accidents, Drug Use, F/M, Halloween, Suicide Attempt, This is turning into more of a Jim Hopper character study than anything else, Time Travel, big ol' time travel romance, highschool!jopper, this is your brain on astrology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:22:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25996687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickovny/pseuds/dickovny
Summary: On a lost stretch of highway in 1996, the planets align and form a doorway to Jim Hopper's past. Specifically to three Halloweens: 1959, 1980, and 1989. The three biggest mistakes of his life. The three times when Uranus tried to tell him something and he just wouldn't listen.[WIP. Largely canon-compliant, save a few minor touches here and there.]
Relationships: Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, background Joyce/Lonnie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	1. dance of the dream man.

**Author's Note:**

> All astrological aspects are done under the assumption that Jim was born April 15th, 1942 in Indianapolis. While the placements in Jim's chart are fictional and are based on a made-up birthday, the locations of Uranus at those times are not. I can't believe it that I actually looked this up and plotted things around it, but I did. 
> 
> [I made him an Aries because David Harbour is an Aries. Sue me.]

**10/29/1996  
URANUS IN AQUARIUS [♅ ⚹ ☉]  
expect groundbreaking liberation from routine.  
revelations, becoming who you truly are.  
the freedom to move past previous limitations.  
  
**An hour out of the city the gas light comes on. The weak illumination of the dashboard clock tells him it’s just past 11:00, which means he’s not just going to be late - he already _is_ late. The kind of late that’s going to start another fight. He could tell her it was important, that he was behind enough on paperwork already, but what good would that do? There’s only maybe another half hour’s worth of highway between him and Hawkins, but he’s doubtful that the truck will make it all the way. Should’ve sold it and gotten one of those more ‘fuel-efficient’ compact cars that she’s been harassing him about. Maybe he’ll tell Joyce just how right she is when he gets there. Might diffuse her some.

Joyce had left this morning under the expectation that he would follow as soon as he got off shift tonight. It had become an annual tradition these past few years - all the kids would come back to Hawkins for Halloween weekend and throw a big family blow-out. _Kids._ Hell, Will had bought a house in Hawkins two years ago and the girl was in grad school. Jim’s beard was more grey now than it was anything else. He ashes his cigarette out of the window, careful not to leave any residue in the truck. Joyce thinks he quit well over a year ago and it’s a secret he’d like to keep to himself, doesn’t want to give her anything else to worry about. She’s done enough of that already for several lifetimes over.

The last forty or so miles southward of Highway 69 between Hawkins and here are largely empty - those stretches of road far enough out from the city to actually be dark at night. Really dark, where you can’t see more than a couple of yards from the road out into the treeline. Used to be anyway. Every year the road gets a little more full. One more McDonald’s, one more Exxon. A continuous bleed out from Indianapolis to here, that particular brand of mediocre concrete Americana radiating outward and infecting everything it can.  
  
Far enough down the road now that he’s out of range of the UI campus station he’s been half-assedly listening to, the radio starts to crackle with static, drowning out that angry piano girl they’ve been playing so much of lately. They play the song so much he finds himself humming it at weird times of day - something about swinging around at somebody. Boxing or something. He's old and out of touch and listening to the station helps him feel somewhat connected to the zeitgeist.  
  
The static serves as a reminder of the distance behind him, finally convincing him to pull off at the next gas station he sees. This stretch of highway hasn’t been infected by the corporatist yuppie rot quite yet - the little building is one of those classic hybrid gas station/gift shop/tourist traps you see in the middle of Bumfuck, USA. He turns the dial down as he pulls up, fading the static into the background, and it’s then that he notices how _odd_ the building really is. There’s a single gas pump with just two nozzles - the fact that it’s a gas station at all seems like an afterthought.  
  
When his feet connect with the concrete there are a series of firecracker-like pops of protestation from his knees and he is struck by three things in rapid succession. The first is that he is certainly not getting any younger. The second is that it’s cold. _D_ _amn_ cold. He recalls watching the weather that morning with Joyce as she packed their bags for the weekend, that it was supposed to be some kind of record-breaking Halloween weekend weather. Highs in the mid-thirties at best. Fuck the Midwest.  
  
The third thing, which a younger and less road-weary Hopper would’ve noticed first, is the massive buzzing neon sign above the door. _Stargazin’ Sofie’s_ , in throbbing pink script with a blinking teal crescent moon behind it. Then hand-painted much smaller underneath, ‘and Gas and Gifts.’ It doesn't imbue him with much confidence, but thinking about how late he is already and how little faith he has in the accuracy of the gas gauge of the truck, he resignedly stubs out his cigarette on the pavement and opens the door.  
  
The smell of patchouli and incense overwhelms him immediately. It’s definitely not the convenience store he hoped for. Low-lit, stuffy and atmospheric, he feels like he’s wandered into a library or the front room of someone’s house. Instead of shelves full of packaged snacks and candies, there are tarot cards and crystals, a variety of esoterica that ultimately means nothing to him. A bell at the top of the door jangles loudly when he walks in, but no one responds. He wanders haplessly for a moment, peering at the different shelves, trying to politely entertain himself while he waits for someone, _anyone_ who works here to notice that there is a man in the store.  
  
But again, the thought of Joyce. He could be spared a great deal of wrath if he makes it there before she falls asleep. So Hopper saddles up to the counter and tentatively dings the little metal bell on the ledge.  
  
And nothing.  
  
“Hello?” Tapping the bell again, more insistently this time, he calls out to the curtained-off doorway behind the counter. “Is anybody there? I’d like to buy some gas. Some coffee if you’ve got it, too.”  
  
There’s a shuffling from somewhere back there, the sound of some papers being moved around and maybe the rattle of ice in a glass and the slurp of a straw. The beaded curtains open noisily, revealing an impossibly tiny woman wearing an improbable quantity of bracelets and necklaces. Hell, maybe the clinking was _her_ and not the curtain. Sofie, he can only assume, looks up at him from under a mountain of untidy gray curls and the most comically-oversized coke bottle lenses he’s seen in years.  
  
“Somebody’s an impatient little April baby, huh?” Her voice is both raspy and high-pitched, straddling the concepts of old and young in an unpleasant dissonance. She hobbles over to the till with all the haste of the crypt-keeper. The fact that _yes,_ James Hopper was born on April 15th, contributes to the hazy dream-like quality of the entire experience. It reminds him of the few times he tried to watch _Twin Peaks._ Really just did _not_ get what was going on with that woman and that log. _  
_ _  
_ “Listen. Ma’am. I’m running late and my wife is gonna kill me, can I please just get some gas?” Rummaging in his wallet, he comes up with a crumpled ten dollar bill and gently sets it on the counter, pushing it towards her. Punching the register keys with one hand and reaching into the pocket of her sweater with another, she pulls out a large orange cheese puff and crunches it loudly between her teeth, wiping the residue from her fingers onto her skirt.  
  
“Aren’t you gonna ask how I _knew_ when you were born?” She smacks her lips, self-satisfied. He wants to fight her, wants to lie and tell her smug little face that _no, he wasn’t born in April thank you very much_ but he’s too fucking tired and doesn’t really care. So he sighs, acquiescing to the oddity of the whole interaction.  
  
“Fine. How did you know I was born in April?”  
  
“You’re an Aries. Top to bottom. Stem to stern. Textbook Aries. All impulse and drive, zero control. I can see it in your eyes, all this passion. Anger, too. You’ve made a lot of mistakes haven’t you? Said things you shouldn’t have, kissed girls you shouldn’t have, definitely drank things you shouldn’t have,” She looks at him earnestly now, all traces of that superiority gone and damn if it doesn’t make him wildly uncomfortable. “Aries is the beginning, the infant we all are stumbling out in the beginning of the karmic wheel, toddling out into the light with our balled up fists, screaming at everything. Wouldn’t be surprised if your damn moon was in Aries, too. You’d give anything, wouldn’t you? To go back, with all this knowledge and self-possession you have now and tell yourself a thing or two.”  
  
The drawer of the till bangs open and she jumps, the sudden noise halting her train of thought. He takes the interruption as the welcome _Deus ex Machina_ he needs to leave the store, but she stops him at the door, calling out to him one last time.  
  
“Listen, my great ram friend. Uranus is in Aquarius right now. And if I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am … just be careful out there. Things are gonna line-up for you. In a big way. Midnight in two days time. Listen to your heart, your truth. They don’t call old Uranus ‘The Awakener’ for nothing, all right?"

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbles. His hands shake as he fumbles with the door, and he calls out a weak ‘thank you’ before lumbering off into the night. For the life of him, he can’t place just how long he was inside, but it was long enough for the temperature to drop another five or ten degrees. Short gusts of wind burst across the highway and chill him way down deep. The ancient gas pump is slow as all hell, and he’s never felt so acutely worn as he does right now, a sad sack of shivering old bones.

The car door creaks when he climbs into the cab, a metaphor for the ache in his joints, and he can’t get away from this place fast enough. Who is this old witch, anyway? And why would he let her say these things, let them seep under his skin like this?  
  
All that stands between him and a long weekend in Hawkins with his wife and all those damn kids is a few miles of empty road. As the yellow lines blur past him in the darkness, he turns the radio up. Warbling steel guitar slips past the static - that instrumental melancholy song they played all the time when he was a kid. Fuck if he could remember the name. It was funny how time distorted things. He recalled the song having a warm, romantic tone when he was younger. But now it played as a dull threat. The sort of thing you’d hear at the end of the world.  
  
Another burst of static from the radio - he bends forward to adjust it, taking his eyes off the road for just a second - and everything is illuminated with a blinding light. Looking up, he has to shield his gaze with his hand to see it - it looks like a gate or a doorway - this big wall of white, opening up and swallowing the truck.

He’s too busy trying to keep the truck on the road to see it. This foul little creature scrabbling along the ditch on the side of the road. It waits for the doorway to slide open, for the truck to barrel through, and then narrowly scampers through before the gate slams shut again, disappearing as if it were never there at all. Leaving the highway just as dark and empty as it was before.

 **10/30/1980  
** **URANUS IN SCORPIO [♅ ⚹ ♆]  
** **expect spiritual awakenings.  
** **dreams and the metaphysical.  
beware your imagination and the use of mind-altering substances** **.**

Sunlight streams through the cracks in a pair of busted-up old blinds and lands on his face, rousing him from a deep slumber. He stares for a moment at the beam of light, transfixed by the dust motes suspended and dancing within. Jim’s back is killing him, and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. There’s an awful stale taste in his throat - like he slept with his mouth open the whole night. Existing in that limbo between consciousness and dreams, he hasn’t quite taken in his surroundings yet. Wherever he is feels like a natural place to wake up, and he knows without looking that if he reaches out with his right arm he will find a half-empty can of flat beer from the night before, resting on the cluttered coffee table. It’s a respite from the dry unpleasantness in his mouth, but tastes just as cheap as he expects, grimacing as he gulps it down.

Something’s bothering him, but he can’t quite put a finger on it. A nagging sensation in the back of his head that he shouldn’t be _here_. But it feels so perfectly natural, rolling off of the well-worn plaid couch that he slept on, grabbing an armload of empty beer cans and various and sundry bits of detritus from the night before to cram into a trash bag on the floor. He settles into the muscle-memory of a morning routine, rattling a bottle of pills into his hand before fisting a couple into his mouth, dry-swallowing with an earned competence. He stares at his reflection in the dingy yellow light of the bathroom mirror and can’t help but feel that it just isn’t him. Or it’s _him -_ but not the right him.

The rickety trailer door slams shut behind him, and he’s struck by a new thought. Jim Hopper doesn’t live in this trailer anymore. But he can’t figure out where he _does_ live. Unsure if it’s the plush haze of the pills or something else entirely, he can’t quite remember last night, try as he might. He knows that this is wrong but he can’t quite articulate what, exactly, would be _right._ So he pushes onward, clamoring into the driver's side of the truck. _  
_ _  
_ It struggles to start in the chilly October air and he’s forced to sit in the drive for a while, blowing into his hands for warmth while he waits for the heater to kick in. Something tells him that Joyce would know what to do, that Joyce always knows. _That_ he can count on. Following the impulse, he turns left out of the driveway and heads towards the Byers’ house. He’d be late for work - so what?  
  
The ten minute drive unspools before him like a dream - everything that rolls by the windows gives him the same feeling he had in the trailer. That it all looks wrong but he can’t put his finger on it. He parks the car, bemoaning the leaves covering the end of the drive. He thought that Will was better than that - in fact, Will had been _begging_ for an allowance increase and Hop had suggested to Joyce that he start doing all the yard work first, as a gesture of good faith. But that - that didn’t make sense. Where did that thought even come from? Because the more he thought about it the more he was pretty sure Will hadn’t lived with them in _years._  
  
He was so caught up in this train of revelations that he didn’t realize he was knocking on the front door. The kid that answers the door is so small that he has to look down to see him, and it’s _Will,_ but he’s like. Jesus, eight or nine years old?  
  
“Will, Honey,” Joyce calls out as she approaches the door. “Who is it? You can’t just open the door and _stare,_ we talked about that.”  
  
“It’s a _cop_ , Mom,” he whines, ducking behind her the second she gets in the doorway, hugging his arms around her waist. There’s dark circles under her eyes and a cigarette dangling from her lip - he’s startled by how underweight she is, clothes sagging on a wiry and tense frame.  
  
“Who the _fuck_ is it?” A male voice yells from somewhere inside, and Jim can’t help but guess that it’s Lonnie. Joyce jumps imperceptibly at the sound, and it chills him to see it. She bends down to hush her son, whispering in his ear before he rushes back down the hallway.  
  
“Jim,” she speaks hurriedly, under her breath, her eyes darting back to the living room every few words. “What are you doing here? You know you shouldn’t be coming over like this, especially after last week.”  
  
He doesn’t know what last week means - his head is swimming now - sweat runs down his brow despite the chill of the air and he feels like the earth is spinning too fast. None of this makes any goddamn sense. None of this feels right at all. The urge to run, to get away from this all, is overpowering. Somehow, an apology stumbles from his lips and he lurches his way back down the driveway. 

There’s a newspaper at the bottom of the drive, soggy with the morning dew. He can't pick it up fast enough, hands stumbling and stiff with cold. His eyes scan for the date - it’s Thursday, October 30th, 1980.  
  
Jim Hopper shouldn’t be here at _all._


	2. sweet dream baby.

**NEPTUNE’S GLYPH: A CRESCENT, PLACED SKYWARD, TO SYMBOLIZE SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY.  
THE CROSS OF MATTER, SITUATED BENEATH.  
THE SOUL YEARNS TO ESCAPE FROM THE LIMITATIONS OF THIS PLANE.**

**the natal retrograde neptune individual should be extra-cautious at this time.  
this planet grows passive in its reverse motion, ruling over deception, treachery and lies.  
beware the flim-flam man.** **  
****  
**So it’s 1980. So what? Stopped at a red light, he thuds a pack of Marlboro Reds dully against his palm, hoping the practiced rhythm will jog something in his memory. Everything in his head is a jumbled mess, a mobius strip of recollections and imagery.

The long term memory is solid, and he’s thankful for that. He knows his name, his parent’s names. He knows that he’s late for work and he also knows that nobody’s gonna give a shit. Being police chief in a town that barely needs policing is nice like that. But as he signals to pull off from the main road and head to the station, he finds himself swept by a current of _future_ memory. Certainty about things he should be absolutely uncertain about. That Joyce is supposed to _know_ him. That her kids are too small. That he doesn’t live in that damn trailer and hasn’t in a very long time.

That certainty extends to a powerful sense of foreboding about this Halloween. Whatever it is that should produce such a sensation of unease sits occluded behind a veil of dense fog. When he turns to grab his hat from the back seat, he is greeted by a veritable graveyard of sticky used cans of Schlitz. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe he’s finally succeeded in his attempts at completely fucking obliterating the last thing tethering his dumb animal brain to this bleak reality.

Looking through the dingy windshield, he makes eye contact with Flo as she crosses the parking lot. His attempt at a polite smile and wave comes off more as a grimace than anything else, and she tuts at him, shaking her head. Judgmental fucking bitch. Like she’s never been late for anything. Like she’s never been hungover. He wonders if it’s still considered a hangover at this point, and not more of a lifestyle choice.

The tacky carrot-colored Jack O’Lantern sweater she’s wearing serves as another reminder of the approaching holiday - there’s a context-less vision swimming around his head of smashing a carved pumpkin with a tire iron, his hands gummy and smeared with the guts of the thing, seeds stuck to the hairs of his forearm. Real dread coils in his belly. He belches and it tastes of bile.

Whatever he drank or smoked or snorted must have done a number on him, he muses. There’s a blank spot where last night should be, but it doesn’t worry him too much. Unlike the rest of the brain fog, it’s a garden variety black-out, the kind he welcomes and strives for. All he really hopes is that he wore a fucking condom. 

Although - maybe he’ll catch that nice form of syphilis that rots your brain out of your skull. Just what he needs.

There’s only so much self-hatred you can experience before it starts to morph into self-pity. Resigning himself to figuring out whatever all of this means later, he checks his reflection in the rearview, puts on his badge, and pops open the glove compartment to reach for his gun.

Only it isn’t there. 

Last night took his dignity and his memories and his goddamn gun.

What kind of shit cop _loses their fucking gun?_

Closing his eyes, his forehead collides with the steering wheel in surrender, and everything goes blissfully sideways.  
  
 **10/30/1959** **  
****URANUS IN LEO** **[** **♅** **☍ ♀]  
** **revelations of the heart abound.** **  
****don’t hold on too tightly.  
** **you won’t find absolution in another’s bed, but not for lack of trying.** **  
****  
**“Have we lost you, James?”

There’s drool on his arm and a crick in his neck, and he’s vaguely aware of the sensation of more than several pairs of eyes glancing in his direction. A girl titters with nervous laughter a couple of feet behind him. It’s distinct, bright and a touch too loud, and he knows without looking that it’s Chrissy Carpenter. Cautiously, he raises his head from his desk.

“I’m sorry, sir?” He swallows thickly. The classroom is silent. Everything seems to hinge on his response - if only he knew what the question was. As far as he knows, he was just sitting in a rusted pick-up truck in a police station parking lot, smoking a cigarette and praying for the sweet release of death before learning his life was imploding with a new, spectacular angle of self-sabotage.

How he ended up in his high school math class he hasn’t a fucking clue.

Scanning the room for a kind face, his eyes land on Bob. Sweet, gentle, neurotic little Bob, frantically attempting eye contact from behind a pair of horned rim glasses. Seated at the desk catty corner to his, Bob flashes him a scrap of paper, obscured from the teacher’s view by his textbook. Dumbly, he reads the word scrawled in pencil, praying that this isn’t some kind of trick.

“I mean, hypotenuse,” he clears his throat, speaking with a little more confidence. “The hypotenuse, sir.”

The teacher ( _Mr. Rutherford, Jim recalls suddenly)_ narrows his eyes, sucking his teeth in blatant annoyance. Jim feels a certain pride in depriving him of this opportunity for humiliation.  
  
“Yes, Mr. Hopper. Strangely enough, you are correct,” he turns to the blackboard, picking up his chalk. “Even stranger still is the compulsion Mr. Newby feels on a regular basis to assist you.” 

Salvation comes to him in the form of the bell, and Mr. Rutherford is drowned out by the squeak of loafers and saddle shoes on linoleum, the scuffle of chairs being pushed out and textbooks thumped closed. The air has that crackling, electric charge of teenage excitement.

It’s the Friday before Halloween, and every period that ends brings the student body _that_ much closer to the festivities.

Jim is slower than the others to file in the hallway. He searches the crowd for Bob, for some kind of foothold in this confusion. Bob makes sense. Bob is smart and rational and consistent. Bob is _good_. Clad in the most unfortunately loud sweater-vest, he’s also pretty hard to miss. Combined with the glasses and a scarlet bow-tie, it’s almost as if he is _begging_ to get stuffed into a trashcan. Jim’s halfway to his locker, wading through the ocean of bodies between them when he hears her voice.

“Jim! Wait up!” 

It’s an instant sort of recognition, knowing exactly who it is before he turns his head. A voice he’s heard a thousand times before. But the knowledge doesn’t cushion him from the blow - from the way his heart swells when he turns around and sees her.

Joyce is a vision in navy tartan - the way the pinafore dress clings to her tiny waist, the swing of the skirt as she comes to rest next to him. Jim knows jack-shit about apparel, all those words about cut and cloth would mean nothing to him. But he knows he loves that dress, can describe in acute detail how it makes his palms damp and his breathing shallow.

“Guess what?” Her grin is toothy and genuine, dark eyes looking up at him from under those soft lashes. He’s a fool for her - a damn fool. “I finally finished those sweaters last night.”

“What?” He hasn’t the slightest idea what she’s talking about. It’s the same feeling he had at the end of the driveway. That he shouldn’t be here. Everything is fractured and sideways.

“Seriously? The matching sweaters for Alice’s party tomorrow? I _swear,_ James Hopper, I have been hand-stitching felt for days for _you_ , and you don’t even care! Why do I bother?” She’s teasing him now, slipping into their easy little combative flirtations, and he’d love to follow her down that path like he usually does.

But looking over her head he sees across the hall, his height giving him a line of sight clear above the throng of student bodies. There’s trouble brewing - Larry Price and a couple of cronies are flanking poor young Mr. Newby. That can’t be good.

He pushes Joyce aside gently, ignoring her whines of annoyance. Larry’s got Bob backed against the lockers, clutching his books defensively against his chest. Son of a _bitch_.  
  
“Hey,” He bellows across the hall and the commotion around him comes to a stuttering halt. “Larry! Leave him alone.

Seventeen year-old Jim is tall, yes, but not yet the bulky man he would grow to become. Lanky and awkward in his frame, the closer he gets to Larry Price the more he feels that he may have misjudged this entire situation. He’s a snarling sweaty behemoth, and although Jim has a few inches on him, the way that Larry is stuffed into his letterman fills him with a sense of unease. The hallway is quiet as a tomb - everyone is watching this turn of events with bated breath, and not just a trembling, terrified Bob.

Looking over his shoulder, there’s Joyce - leaning against the wall, her eyes all apprehension, with a lip caught in her teeth and a flush on her cheeks.

For fuck’s sake. The things a boy will do for a girl.

“What’d you just say to me, Hopper?” Larry sneers at him, all doped up on teenage machismo. Dougie, the more rotund of the two lackeys, snorts a laugh. Jim swallows hard. He’s not sure if Larry is ballsy enough to start a fight in the middle of the hallway like this - but it’s all Jim can hope for right now. 

He doesn’t know how this will turn out, but something tells him that there are worse fights in his life yet to come. So he plants his feet, sticks out his chin, and does his best Brando.

“You heard me, Larry. Leave him _alone._ ”

There’s a swagger to Larry, a glint of madness in his eye. The look of a boy who never got to be one - somebody in his life made him think that the only way to survive was to make yourself all hard edges and _fast_. The beat or be beaten type. Jim had always chalked it up to sheer oafish stupidity. Looking at him now, there's a lingering air of desperation, too.

Larry leans in close and his breath reeks, that dank miserable smell of dip and the accompanying tooth decay.

“I’m gonna waste you for you this, James Hopper,” he laughs and it’s way too high-pitched for Jim’s liking. “Just you wait. You’re gonna hurt so bad - make you wish you’ve never been born. And what - all for this fat piece of _shit_?”

He fights the urge to clench his teeth, future experience telling him that’s how you lose one, that you just have to roll with the impact. It’s a molar he lost - _will_ lose - this prescience tells him. Just take the hit to the face, and let Larry feel like a nice big man.

But it’s a hit that never comes. The bell rings and their audience scatters, like light on a pile of roaches. Larry hocks a stream of rancid tobacco spit on Jim’s shoe before he turns and struts away, his two boys hot on his heels.

He glances around for Joyce, hoping to bask in his momentary triumph, but she’s disappeared in the receding tide of students. Instead it’s just him and Bob and an empty hall. No longer held together by adrenal response, Bob all but collapses, the books in his arms tumbling to the tile.

“This is - gosh. This is just so embarrassing,” Bob mutters to the floor. “Thanks, James. I mean, that was pretty stupid. You’re absolutely going to kick your ass kicked later. But thanks all the same.”

“You really gotta learn to stand up for yourself, at least a little.” He kneels to join him, picking up the last of the assorted papers strewn on the floor. _How did he end up friends with someone so pathetic?_

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Bob huffs. “We’re late for English, Jim. Come on.”

As they start down the hall, he has to ask - “What do you mean by that?”

“What do I mean? Oh please. You show up in Hawkins in the eighth grade, don’t talk to anybody but Joyce for a year. You never say anything, you just take it, all that crud about your Grandfather living out in the woods. I mean sure, nobody’s kicking you around too much for it, not when you keep your head down, and girls seem to love the whole ‘mysterious wounded stranger’ schtick.

“But there’s a reason you’re friends with me, Jim. I’m _well_ aware I’m nobody’s first choice.”

Ah. That answers it. Apparently Jim is pathetic _here,_ too. 


	3. turn your bones to glass.

**neptune, placed as it is in the fourth house,** **  
** **can indicate a strong unconscious emotional tie to the home and family** **  
** **that may be karmic in nature**

A sensation of sliding - the floor goes the wrong way and everything is black. And then Jim Hopper is sitting wide-eyed and shaky at his desk inside the station. With both hands he touches his face, equal parts comforted and surprised at the growth of beard that he feels. He runs his fingers lightly against the pressboard of the desk, confirming its reality. A helpful tether to the here and now.

 _1980\. You’re in 1980, Jim,_ he reassures himself. Which isn’t quite the balm on his fractured sanity that he hopes for, given that he’s not sure he’s supposed to be _here_ either. But 1980 certainly feels less wrong than 1959. A minor victory.

He doesn’t remember how he got to his desk, but the fact that he’s alone and unbothered indicates that no one noticed the _missing police-issue firearm_ that should’ve been part of his uniform today. There’s no telling how long he’s got until someone raises hell - but he’ll take whatever head start he can get today.

Last night’s black out is made all the more concerning by his recent sojourn to his senior year. What the _fuck_ was that? He’s never had a memory that vivid in his life. It wasn’t a hallucination either - he’s done his fair share of Lucy, even had a flashback or two. But this was different. It’s like he was _there_ all over again, in that crowded quiet hallway. Waiting for Larry Price to kick his stupid ass.

And then just greying out in the car and ending up at his desk? Like a fucking heroin nod or something. Admittedly, he had spent most of his time back in Hawkins doing his best to destroy his mind. But he hadn’t expected to be so spectacularly successful at it.

This train of thought is derailed by the phone on his desk, buzzing and blinking insistently. Flo must have transferred a call in to his direct line. _Jesus Christ, what if somebody found his gun?_

“Why can’t I ever reach you at home?” A female voice, clipped and strained with the sort of annoyance he tends to generate in people. He’s relieved until he isn’t. “I hate calling you at work, and you know this.”

“Shit, Diane, I’m sorry.” The apology falls as flat as it should. He's pretty sure he knows why she’s calling, and he’s been purposely avoiding it all week. When it rains, it pours.

“Are you okay?” Her tone, rife with genuine concern, cuts like a knife. An amicable divorce is a miserable thing. The way it just withers away into total indifference. Sometimes he finds himself yearning for real hostility instead of this meaningless kindness. “You sound like shit, James.”

“I’m just tired, I’ve been - busy.”

“I’m calling because, well. The insurance company has been calling me - I thought you said you handled it? Something about passing it on to a collections agency. If you don’t have the money I can ask Bill, it’s not a big deal - I just. I thought you had this taken care of.”

The thing they don’t tell you about your child wasting away from the inside is how fucking _expensive_ it is. And the vultures never let up - not till they’ve had their fill. Doesn’t matter how much you grieve or how small the coffin is.

A police chief’s salary in some podunk place like Hawkins isn’t a whole lot - and vices aren’t cheap either. Necessity being the mother of invention, Jim began to think _creatively._ He could keep telling himself that it was for a good cause, that he had been dealt a bad hand and it was all about Sara and doing right by Diane. But at the end of the day - Jim was on the take. No two ways about it.

Even then, the extortion market in Hawkins is slim pickings. It’s not a real hotbed of criminal activity. There isn’t a whole lot to look the other way on - just Eddie “The Eel” and his little enterprise out at the Motel 6. And even then those envelopes were starting to look lean - especially since Jim started taking merchandise as payment as well. So, maybe he _did_ start to disregard the increasingly urgent looking notices from the insurance companies. He had simply banked on the fact that he had no assets to seize and that Sara wasn’t getting any more gone.

It hadn’t occurred to him that Diane would get involved.

He’d have to go talk to Eel tonight. Insist on only cash going forward. Hell, he’s probably going to need to raise his rates. The idea of her asking _Bill_ to pay for this made his guts churn - it would take the last shred of dignity he had left. 

“I’ll call them as soon as I can. I have this under control, okay? Don’t worry about it. And don’t bring it up to fucking Bill.”

He hangs up before she can protest, and in a moment of thoughtless rage hurls the pencil cup from his desk at the wall. It shatters on impact - an exploding barrage of plastic pens with chewed up caps and bits of busted ceramic strewn onto the carpet. The regret is instant and stale, the slight release not worth the next five minutes on his knees tidying the damage.

And that’s it, isn’t it? That’s his whole life. Some instinctive impulse followed by a shitstorm of consequences. Over and over again. A woman - some shriveled old thing at a roadside store in another when - once called him a _ram._ How apt.

When he tosses the pile of broken pieces into the trash can, he catches a glimpse of a cigarette butt with a soft pink lipstick smear. He knows it isn’t hers - he hasn’t shared a smoke with her in two decades, and the metallic sheen on it makes him think that it’s likely one of Rose’s - but he can’t help but think about Joyce.

 **venus is exalted in dreamy, romantic pisces.** **  
** **venus in pisces natives may be attracted to partners who suffer or need guidance.  
** **they are sensitive and lost-in-love.**

Another slide to another when. Maybe he should stop fighting this, stop trying to make any sense of it all. It doesn’t feel like he has a choice at this point. Might as well settle in.

He is sitting on the ground now under the bleachers, a pouch of tobacco and a couple of papers on his thigh. Jim always rolls his own cigarettes - at least he always did back then. It was something he picked up from his Grandfather. The act is meditative, centering. Makes him feel like part of a long line of working stiffs, real salt of the earth types.  
  
He’s so focused on the feel of the paper against his palm that he doesn’t hear her footsteps.

“Hey there, _dreamboat!_ ” Alice Gilbert practically skips up to him under the bleachers, in her saddle shoes and bobby socks, blonde ponytail bouncing with her gait. “I can’t talk long - I’m supposed to be getting some paint out of the custodial shed for pep squad. Painting some signs for next week's game and all that.” The sing-song lilt to her voice is equal parts annoying and bafflingly cute, one of those girls who ends everything with an upward inflection. Satisfied with his roll job, he lights the cigarette and waves it towards her in offering.

“Thanks but no thanks, James. David _hates_ it when I smell like tobacco. Or else I totally would, you know?” She goes quiet for a second, probably thinking about the backseat of David Jackson’s Studebaker. “Anywho, I just wanted to touch base with you, make sure you’re coming to my party tomorrow night. It’s gonna be a real gas. I just - I know that parties aren’t really your _thing_ and I never see you out places and stuff. But - well. You know, Joyce is really excited. So like, do it for her, at least. She’s my friend and I want her to be happy. You know?”

Why does Joyce care if he goes to this Halloween party? It’ll be Joyce’s friends there - not his. Unless you count Newby. Maybe Benny Hammond. But Bob probably won’t go, if he got invited at _all_ , and there’s always the chance that Benny will have to work. He couldn’t possibly understand why she would want him there, just clinging to her like a lost puppy.

“Why does she need me there? She goes to parties without me all the time.”

Alice rolls her eyes so hard he sees only whites. “Oh my _gosh,_ all you boys are so dull. Truly. The dullest.”  
  
“Okay, so I’m dull then,” He gestures broadly with his palms in supplication. “Please, _Alice._ Explain it to me like I am ‘truly the dullest.’”

“Look - you can’t tell Joyce I told you this, not ever, okay? She’ll totally flip her lid if she finds out I said anything. I basically made a blood promise to her to never tell anybody, ever. Especially not _you_. But - remember when you asked me out in the ninth grade? And I said yes, because oh my _gosh_ you had just gotten that haircut and hit that growth spurt and looked so - okay sorry, not the point. Anyway! I said yes and then I just totally stood you up?”

Alice has a habit of speaking a mile a minute when she gets going, and there’s a delay before Jim realizes she’s pausing for his response. He nods dumbly, grunting in the affirmative.

“I was totally going to go! I promise! But then - Joyce was just so _sad_ about it. Not that she _said_ anything because she’s just the meekest little old thing, sweet as pie - but she moped the whole week. And I’ve known her since we were _seven,_ James! That’s a thousand years in girlfriend time. I couldn’t do that to her, you know? It would be just the saddest backseat bingo of all time. Not that you’d be disappointing or anything, I’m sure you’re a real treat. With those moody eyebrows. You’re so _pouty_ and brooding. But - I’d just feel like a real trashbag, you know? Just. The pits. And she’s such a _sweet_ girl.”

He wants so desperately to ask her for clarification, because Jim doesn’t speak teenage girl, not fluently. Why would Joyce be sad if he and Alice messed around _one time_? But then Alice is looking back towards the school, her eyes as wide as hubcaps.

“Listen, James. It’s truly fat city under here with you, but she’s coming _right now_ and I gotta beat feat anyway, or Mrs. Ratliff’s gonna look for me, you know? Promise me you won’t tell her anything? Not a _single word,_ James Hopper. Swear it on your _life -_ “

“Ooh, what are we swearing about?” Joyce is chewing on licorice from a brown paper bag in her hands, her cheeks whipped pink with the autumn wind.

“Don’t you worry your _pretty_ little head about it, Joyce, my darling.” Laughing to herself, Alice steals a piece of the candy and pops it in her mouth, chewing noisily, before turning and dashing off towards the custodial shed. Joyce looks at him for some form of explanation and all he can manage is a shrug. Mutely, he stands and offers her the second cigarette he had been working on for the duration of Alice’s little tirade, in anticipation of Joyce’s arrival, and she gladly accepts. They share a comfortable silence, their smoke visible in the air when they exhale. Joyce has been trying to teach herself to blow rings since junior year, and she’s still no closer, but not for lack of trying.

Maybe she can shed some light on whatever it was Alice was dancing around. Maybe that will tell him why he’s here.

“Hey, so uh. Joyce,” he ventures tentatively. “This party tomorrow? You _really_ want me to go with you?”

She coughs on her smoke, something he hasn’t seen her do since the tenth grade. “How could you ask that? You dunce. Have you not heard me talking about those _stupid_ costumes all week?”

He searches in the ocean of unmoored memory he’s been wading through and finds it - the two matching sweaters, one black with a white _P,_ the other white with a black _S._ The visual is accompanied by a real strong sense of heartbreak and a terrible amount of unease. Whatever that means. This pain is too acute and he shies away from it, trying instead to focus on the anise scent of the candy and the gentle lavender in Joyce’s shampoo.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course,” He nods sagely, trying to speak with confidence. “I’m gonna be salt, you’ll be pepper. Obviously.”

“That’s what Ms. Keane used to call us - remember? You had just moved here and we always got in the lunch line together. You never left my side then, you were so darn shy. Her voice was real raspy. ‘ _Hey you two, salt and pepper again.’_ and then she’d slop some meatloaf or … whatever that stuff was supposed to be on the tray and laugh like she was a real comedian.”

Her impression of the woman is so uncanny that he can’t help but smile. Joyce smiles back and it sears him. It would be so easy to kiss her. Why didn’t he ever kiss her?

And then the moment is lost, Joyce tossing the butt of her cigarette on the ground and stamping it out with her toes.

“What are you gonna do about Larry?” She mutters, almost afraid to bring it up at all. Scratching his head, he’s at a total loss. That portion of his life is a blank - whatever brought him here isn’t letting him see everything, just bits and pieces here and there. And the fight with Larry isn’t one of them.

“I guess,” he exhales in resignation, chalking it up to fate. “I’m just gonna have to get my ass kicked.”

She’s not wearing a jacket - she never seems to be dressed warm enough, so slight and frail - and she shivers in the breeze, settling closer to him. Her head comes to rest against his chest and he can’t think of anything else. Larry and his missing gun and the wrongness of things are far away concepts he doesn’t want to dwell on right now. Maybe he’ll get to stay here, right here, right now. It had never occurred to him how happy he was - how lucky they were.

“I can’t wait till we can leave this town,” she sighs. “Promise me that, Jim? As soon as we can - we leave and we never come back.”  
  
**10/30/1989  
****URANUS IN CAPRICORN [** **♅** **□ ☉;☽ ]  
****who are you anyway?  
****_do you even know?_**

The highway sign for the upcoming Hawkins exit rolls on by the car window in the misty grey afternoon. Jim’s legs are cramped - the tiny rental car is packed to the brim and they’ve been driving for almost an hour now. He could’ve gotten them here much faster - Joyce hates speeding, but he hasn’t driven in - well. Not a good idea. Not since everything.

They’re listening to one of those older bands that Will likes, that Jonathan turned him onto. He’s in the backseat, so tall now that the mop on his head almost blocks the rearview mirror, and El is singing along with him, swaying in time to the chant of ‘ _sweet jane’_ along with the radio. Her hair - this acute reminder of the passage of time spent in his absence, this wild halo of curls - frames her giant sunglasses. Joyce drums rhythmically on the steering wheel with her fingertips.

It’s a perfect scene of domestic bliss - a family road trip down from Indianapolis. Everyone is smiling and carefree. Everyone but Jim.

There’s a shriek welling up inside of him.

Because Jim knows this one - Jim knows _exactly_ where he is this time.

It’s the day before Halloween in 1989.

Tomorrow night James Hopper will jump off the Hawkins Bridge.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man, I really took that one line about jim being stood up by alice gilbert in the ninth grade and ran with it.
> 
> the songs I've mentioned in the text so far are:  
> shadowboxer - fiona apple  
> sleepwalk - santo & johnny  
> sweet jane - the velvet underground


	4. twenty-first century schizoid man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, this took a while because _sad chapter is sad_ etc.
> 
> CW for discussion of mental illness, brain injury, talk of self-harm, things of that general nature.

**uranus moving into capricorn through the eighth house** **  
** **this is the house of transformation // of sex and death  
** **squaring the individual’s sun and moon it will generate extreme unease  
** **with regards to the self**

They check into a bed and breakfast in the center of town - this charming two-story Colonial Revival remnant with ivy sprawled over crumbling brick, all decked out for Halloween with the requisite synthetic cobwebs and plastic jack o'lanterns. Jim stops on the front steps and rubs one absentmindedly with his thumb as it stares back at him in a cartoony grin. The look on its stupid face feels like a threat. He wonders to himself if anyone carves the real thing anymore, or if it’s just another art form lost to the sands of time. Like knowing how to change your own oil, or hell - like the hand-rolled cigarettes he eventually moved on from.

There’s a mad dash to unload the car, as being unpacked means they can _go._ Suitcases and dufflebags are dragged up the stairs and tossed onto beds with graceless thumps. As soon as Joyce gives the okay, El and Will dash off to go meet up with the others and do whatever passes for teenaged fun in a town like Hawkins. 

Being alone with Joyce in the room is suddenly and acutely too much, and under the guise of a need to freshen up, Jim retreats to the bathroom and turns on the tub. It’s less about cleanliness and more about the need for space, to reflect on why he’s _here._ Why he’s slingshotting around from one year to the next. And why he’s been deposited in the worst year of his life.

He had come back to them in February - a drooling zombie, wasted on lithium and valium. The doctors claimed he was a threat to himself and to those around him. Nothing but incoherent rage and furious confusion. Joyce got the call from some rusted and peeling mental hospital in the middle of nowhere - they said they had held him for two weeks, and that was all they were willing to do without insurance information or some form of payment. No elaboration was ever provided. No explanations as to where he had been or how he came to be there. Why he was missing two teeth and couldn’t spell his own name and how his left ring finger was so fractured he wouldn’t ever be able to bend it again, not in a way that didn’t shoot electric tingles up and down his spine. 

The way Jonathan tells the story, Joyce took one look at him and raised all hell, screaming at everyone in earshot - had to be held back by an orderly.

Not that Jim remembers any of it.

After folding his clothes and setting them on the sink - a habit he developed in those missing years - he glances in the mirror, his stomach churning with the discordance of things. Staring back at him is a jarring reminder of the violence of the world. A thing that has no place in this gentle room of muted pinks and time-worn cotton towels. His body is a wiry, muscled ruin, marred by a network of scars for which he has no story and tattoos he doesn’t recall. A lit candle on his right bicep, burning behind bars. A Madonna and child on his breast. And across his collar bone, in Cyrrilic, пиндос. When he asked Murray what it meant, he laughed.

“Pindós,” he told him. And then, to explain away Jim’s confusion, “It’s Rusky slang for American. Not meant in a nice way. _Very_ derogatory. How a Mexican man would call you _gringo._ ”

Between his disappearance in July of ‘86 and the hospital is a stretch of fragmented nothingness. Occasionally, he has nightmares of dank cells of stone and mossy green mold. The sharp tang of metal in his nostrils. Words in clipped Russian from behind rotted teeth. A wet cot and echoing screams. And so much snow.

He used to love a white Christmas. Now it just makes him queasy.

The tub is nearly full now, a cloud of steam hovering above the water. He knows he needs to turn it off - but he stares dumbly at the faucet, not comprehending the pieces of metal mounted in the tile.

“Joyce?” He calls to her, tenderly and defeated, listening for the pad of her feet on the hardwood of the bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” Brows knit in consternation, this constant miasma of anxiety that hangs around her every interaction with him these last eight months. He’s like a fucking albatross.

“It’s - It’s happening again. There’s too much water and I need to stop the water.” He hates this. He hates how useless he feels, how achingly pathetic. The sympathy in her eyes as she leans over and twists the knobs. There were so many specialists Joyce dragged him to. Weeks of hospital rooms and the wood-paneled offices of cheap therapists. They all said the same thing, more or less. TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury. Jim grew well-acquainted with the drone of an MRI machine, the words _blunt_ _force trauma._

Sometimes he forgets words. Sometimes he forgets where he is. And sometimes, like now, he forgets how to complete a basic task. He’s gotten better at forming new memories - but only just.

Most of that spring is a slushy grey blur. Visions of Joyce - a house outside of Indianapolis. Will and El constantly hovering over him. By summer, he could somewhat make toast and read the newspaper. The funny pages were tough - wordplay is difficult to parse and he didn’t really understand jokes anymore.

“You know I love you, Jim," She hugs him tightly, breathing her words into his chest - he feels so goddamn stupid just _standing_ there, naked and incompetent.

He would like to tell her that it’s okay, that he loves her, too. He should’ve told her so many things. And he has the time now.

Instead he can’t stop thinking about the bridge in two days’ time. The thing no one tells you about falling from so high - there’s a second breath you have to take on the way down. Right before the water.

 **uranus moving into scorpio through the sixth house** **  
** **this is the house of work/health/daily habits;  
** **expect that all to go right to hell**

He comes to with a start in the parking lot of Benny’s diner, his stomach grumbling with neglect. The idea of driving while greyed out like that is nerve wracking to the extreme - but there’s seemingly nothing wrong with the truck. At least he took _his_ car and not a cruiser.

He’d rather be back in ‘59, all things considered. Getting his clock cleaned by Larry Price would be small potatoes compared to the nightmare fuel of the place he just was, and the bleak bullshit of where he is now. But he can’t go back on command - at least he doesn’t know how that works, can’t seem to control it. And the idea of one of those burgers with the fried egg on it, the way Benny makes the edges all crispy and the yoke runny - that at least sounds pretty good. He might as well make the best of things while he’s here.

And besides, he thinks to himself, feet crunching against the gravel of the parking lot, Benny might have some answers about last night’s blackout. The door jingles when he opens it, and Benny Hammond grunts out a quick ‘be with ya in a minute’ without even turning to look from where he sits at the counter, hunched over some open ledger books, his meaty fist gripping a cup of lukewarm black coffee.

“Don’t worry about it - I’ll just hop back there myself. I can probably still work the grill - not that I was ever any good at it,” Jim teases, coming to sit on the stool next to him. It’s midday lunch and the place should be busy - but it’s just Benny and Jim and some guy in the back booth that he recognizes as a big rig driver from Ohio who passes through here now and again, can’t remember his name. No wonder he looks so pissed about the numbers. “God, the customer service here _sucks._ ” 

Benny laughs to himself, finally pulling away from the tables and columns of figures in red, and rubs at his eyes. 

“You’re right, you were never any good at the grill,” Surveying the near-empty dining room, he sighs. “What happened to us, man? We were so young - all we ever talked about was girls and getting the _fuck outta here_. And now - I’ve turned into my fuckin’ Dad, always mutterin’ about food cost and smelling like old fry grease. What is it about this town that drains all the life outta people?” He pauses and really _looks_ at Jim for the first time since he walked in, and recoils in mock disgust. “ _Christ._ What happened to you? You look like dog shit _,_ man. Where the fuck did you get off to last night?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Just his luck that Benny wouldn’t be able to help. 

“You mean _you_ don’t know? Jesus, what the _fuck_ did you and Rose get into?" Benny’s eyebrows shoot skyward before he peels himself from his stool, shuffling behind the counter. "Lemme grab you some coffee, maybe a little hair of the dog, huh?” 

Jim nods blearily as Benny pulls a bottle of Bushmills from under the counter and pours a finger into the mug, topping it off with a decent pour of black sludge. Cupping the mug in his hands, he lets the steam waft into his face for a moment, trying to figure out the right way to proceed. Being sent forward - to _then_ \- it could only be to stop himself from jumping. It follows then, that there is a reason he’s going where he goes. So if he was brought to _here,_ it could easily be to find this damn gun. If he could only remember what happens - _happened_ \- he could stop it all and go … wherever it is he’s supposed to be. 

“Listen, you look hungry. I’m gonna go make you one of those burgers and then we’ll try to piece this together. I got that new kid Todd back there right now, and he’s okay and all, but you deserve one from _me,_ alright?”

Benny lumbers off to the back, leaving Jim alone with his thoughts and his coffee. He takes a sip and - that can’t be right. It tastes _exactly_ like pool water - the way the chlorine reeks from the pool at the Motel Six. It even burns the back of his nose in the same way. He fights the instinct to spew it out onto the counter, choking it down with a grimace. Imagine trying to explain _that_ to Benny, that his counter is covered with coffee and backwash because it tasted like the bottom of a pool. Leary of the second sip, he sniffs it carefully, but all he gets this time is diner coffee and irish courage. Weird.

Then it occurs to him.

Rose - he hesitates to call her a girlfriend, in any traditional sense of the word - lives at the Motel Six. There could be a connection there. Weirder things have happened to him. Benny says he was with Rose last night - he could’ve easily left the bar with her and gone back to hers. But he woke up at his place. So, what - they hooked up at the motel and then he drove back across town and passed out on his couch? And if he was fucked up enough to forget the entirety of the evening, how did he possibly drive his truck from the bar to the motel to his trailer? Besides - Rose can be a hell of a coke fiend, but that’s about it. Doing the sort of shit it would take to wipe _Jim’s_ slate completely clean isn’t exactly her M.O.

It makes sense but it doesn’t. He’s gonna have to call Rose, see if she can make heads or tails of any of this. Confident that Benny won’t mind he slips behind the counter to use the phone, his finger hovering above the dial pad about to punch in the number for the motel’s front desk, when the door chimes again. Instinctively, he lifts his eyes to look and Joyce is so startled to see him that she pauses for a moment, almost turning around and going back out.  
  
“Oh, Jim. Shit. I didn’t realize you were - I’m just,” Flustered and tongue-tied, she’s clearly uncomfortable with his presence, but he’ll be damned if he knows why. She can’t look him the eye, studying her shoes with her hands shoved deep into her jacket pockets, shuffling from one foot to the other. “I was gonna grab a sandwich before I headed to my shift.” 

“This is public property, Joyce. You don’t have to justify why you’re here.” He grumbles and sets the phone back into the cradle with a click. Calling Rose would have to wait. Between the way Joyce acted this morning, with her shifty references to ‘last week’ and the way she won’t even _look_ at him right now, something needs to be explained. But how to even begin to ask? The last thing he wants is to let anyone in on what’s happening to him. Even Joyce. The future has left him with a strong distaste for being institutionalized. 

“Look uh, Benny just stepped back there for a bit. Do you wanna, I don’t know - sit down and talk?” He gestures at one of the stools half-heartedly, braced for the inevitable rejection. He’s not sure what to do with himself when she actually takes him up on it and sits, launching into what feels like a rehearsed statement. Clearly, she's spent some time preparing for the eventuality of running into him.  
  
“Jim - when I came to you last week to ask about a divorce lawyer, I expected a certain amount of discretion,” Her voice hovers barely above a whisper, and she keeps darting glances around the room as if the trucker in the back booth is going to tell all of Hawkins everything she says. “I just wanted to know how much it cost you and Diane and if there was anybody I should call or if I needed to get any paperwork together first - I certainly didn’t expect you to do what you did.”  
  
Jim crosses his arms and nods solemnly, in mock apology for the thing he still _doesn’t remember,_ hoping that she will keep going and something will finally click.

“It was certainly kind of chivalrous, I guess. Looking back at it,” she smiles sheepishly at the counter for a moment, before a regaining control of her features and adopting a more stern tone. “But you could’ve lost your _job_ or ended up in the hospital, or worse. And now Lonnie is all jumpy and paranoid and fucking weird. He doesn’t know I talked to you but it’s only a matter of time before he puts two and two together. The guy’s an asshole but he’s not stupid. And he’s always been kind of jealous of you.”

So Joyce came to him about a divorce. And then he did something _to_ or _about_ Lonnie that was risky and stupid. It feels like it’s so _goddamn_ close, that a bubble of memory is about to burst to the surface, when his line of thinking is kneecapped by the kitchen door swinging open. And what Jim sees makes him damn near piss his pants.

There’s a plate in Benny’s hand - but Jim’s eyes are glued to his back. Wrapped around his shoulders is an impossibly large insect - its body is tubular and soft-looking, red and black and fat. Like an overgrown caterpillar, mandibles hooked firmly into the base of Benny’s neck, sucking greedily at him. As he passes through the doorway, the spines on its back flutter delicately in the air. The whole thing must weigh at least ten pounds, easy, but Benny doesn’t seem to notice - and neither does Joyce, who is staring _right at him._

The clink of the plate on the counter top sounds like it’s a thousand miles away, inaudible over the jet engine rush of Jim’s heartbeat in his ears.

“You alright there?” Benny sounds quite confident for a man with a bug the size of a house cat currently digging into his throat, and Jim has to grip the counter to keep from collapsing. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.” 

Joyce reaches across the counter and gingerly places her hand atop his. He wants to scream at her, to shake her by the shoulders and ask her how she can possibly ignore the thing _eating his friend._

“Benny has a point. You really don’t look well, Jim. Maybe you should sit down.”

He’s trembling like a leaf now - but then the smell of burnt meat and smoke wafts out from the kitchen and Benny is swearing up and down about how Todd never pays _fucking_ attention to what he’s doing - 

And there’s that tug in his guts again - the feel of the floor starting to slide. He leans into it, accepting that wherever he’s going now is probably better than here.


	5. I never did anything out of the blue.

**with the moon in aries at the time of birth** **  
** **the individual has a heart of fire** **  
** **stability is not your wheelhouse**

Something is burning.

There’s smoke and the stench of burning grease - Jim stares vacantly at the grill in front of him as two all-beef patties turn to shoe leather, his seventeen-year old hands doing nothing to prevent this chain of events. It’s impossible to focus on anything other than the horror he just witnessed. He can’t shake the image of that bug, its bulbous body piled onto Benny’s unsuspecting shoulders. But if Benny didn’t feel it and Joyce didn’t see it, Jim is left to wonder if the thing was even real.

“Oh man, what are you  _ doing? _ ” From the dish pit in the back, Benny follows the smoke trail and hurtles to the line, fire-extinguisher in hand. His shoulders slump with an exhale of relief at the lack of real fire, peeling the now-useless charred disks from the grill’s surface with a metal spatula. “You have to pay better attention when you’re workin’ the grill, bud! We’ve talked about this. You’re lucky you didn’t set off the alarm - my dad woulda killed me. As far as he knows, I’m the only one who touches this thing.”

It’s disorienting, seeing Benny so  _ young _ , with hair on his head and none on his chin. He had forgotten how slender he was too - Benny didn’t put all that weight on until after he came back from the war. Until he took the diner over from his father. He watches the way Benny’s hands move without hesitation, practiced and graceful, as he cleans up Jim’s mess and starts two new burgers. Ever since he was tall enough to see over the top of the grill, Benny’s dad had tried to impart upon him every snippet of cooking related wisdom he possessed. His hands had all the tiny scars from knife mishaps and oil burns to prove it. 

It was the way he and his father communicated to each other, maintaining some kind of connection in his mother’s absence. They didn’t talk about it, the gaping hole her death left in the emotional tapestry of their home, but they could cook. And sometimes that was enough.   
  
And maybe that’s why Jim and Benny found such an easy back-and-forth. They were motherless sons, raised by decent men. There’s a comfort in finding someone who has lost the same things that you have, a primal understanding. He knew not to ask questions about it. Not the way the other kids did when he moved back to Hawkins, after the accident. They were the innocent questions of curious children -  _ what happened to her? did it hurt? why don’t you live with your dad now? do you think she’s in heaven? did they send the driver to jail?  _ But each one, with its wide-eyed, slack-jawed gaze, made him think of the way her hair smelled and the warmth in her voice, and how he would never have that again. 

Joyce knew not to ask, too. Horowitz was right next to Hopper, and he remembered the dread he felt when she craned her neck from her desk to his, that first day in Hawkins Middle School. He braced for it, for the oncoming interrogation. But all she asked was if he packed a lunch or was buying one, because her mom packed her liverwurst again and she really wanted to trade it for something else. She flashed him a toothy grin when he said he’d let her have the peanut butter one in his lunch sack, and he was hooked.   
  
He never told her how much he hates liverwurst.

“I feel like a real klutz, Benny,” he admits later, through the window to the kitchen. After his earlier mishap, Jim had retreated from the back to his usual position behind the counter, where he worked after school a few days a week for the last two years. He was the only one of Benny’s friends that was competent and responsible enough for Mr. Hammond to offer a job. They were friends before - but the hours spent in such close and quiet proximity had cemented their bond. Jim didn’t have any brothers by birth, but he would consider Benny one without a thought. 

“Don’t worry about it. I shoulda known better than to leave you unsupervised, you spaz,” Benny chuckles to himself. “We’re just lucky you didn’t burn the whole place down. Wouldn’t be the worst thing though, would it?”

“How do you figure?” Jim bends below the counter and grabs a towel to wipe things down with. Ben Hammond Senior was always grateful for how fastidious Jim tended to be.

“Well then I wouldn’t have to take it over. What, you think I wanna stay here my whole life? Look at my dad. He’s wasted his whole life making mashed potatoes and salisbury steaks for the same twenty people. And for what? Nah. I’m not gonna end up like that. I’m gonna go see the world. Get a girl in every state. Even Hawaii.”

It’s a punch to the gut - knowing what he knows. What could he possibly say? As if on cue, sparing him the need to lie to his friend about the certainty of his future, there’s a playful knock at the diner window. Joyce stands outside in the last vestiges of waning daylight, in a pair of jeans and a short wool coat, waving at him with a gloved hand.

“Joyce is here, mind if I step out now? All of the condiments are done already.” It’s a tradition they’ve developed on Fridays. Joyce tutors the Goldschneider’s boy down the road from the restaurant, finishing up about the same time he gets off. They walk back to her house together, and then it’s a short bike ride through the woods from her house on towards his grandfather’s place.

“Damn, is it six o’clock already? Yeah, that’s fine. Dad’ll be here in the next fifteen minutes anyway. Just make sure you take the trash out with you when you go, alright?”

Jim grunts in agreement, waving back at Joyce and gesturing to the back of the building. She nods in response and traipses off to meet him. Passing through the kitchen to grab the garbage, he mumbles a goodbye to Benny on the way out of the employee door to the dumpster.

“Gosh that  _ stinks,  _ Jim. How do you put up with it?” Joyce makes an exaggerated show of plugging her nose as he hefts the bag up and into the bin. “You always smell like a wet french fry.” 

“Money. That’s how I put up with it. And besides,” he laughs, jokingly tapping her on the arm with his fist. “You love the smell of wet french fries. I hear it even turns you on.”    
  
She snorts out a laugh, a hint of red creeping across her cheeks, waiting for Jim to grab his bicycle from behind the dumpster. He pauses for a moment - struck by the beauty of her smile and the way the orange-streaked sunset painting the clouds behind her illuminates her hair. She was so vibrant here, crackling with teenage confidence. There’s something else - he feels stupid for never having noticed until now - but he never touched another woman with hair like that before or since. Blondes, redheads, maybe one or two with light brown locks. But never the near-black that Joyce has. And doesn’t that say something?

“Hey, Hopper!”

Larry Price’s sneering voice tears the moment in two. Joyce stiffens and swallows hard, looking at Jim with wide, nervous eyes. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispers, quicked and clipped. “You don’t have to let him rattle your cage like this. He’s an  _ idiot,  _ James.” 

“Come on, candy ass,” Larry hollers. “Or are you too chicken shit to face me?”

He looks around, realizing that Larry is here alone. Which should be comforting - the fact that he came without his usual retinue of vacant lackeys means it’ll be a one on one fight. Instead, it fills him with greater unease. If even  _ Dougie  _ thought Larry was going too far, he must be in a hell of a mood. There’s no one here to intervene this time. No audience of gawking teenagers, no teachers or bells to save him. Just Jim and Larry and Joyce and the dumpster and whatever sick impulse this asshole is harboring. 

And as much as Joyce tells him it doesn’t matter, as much as he wants to  _ believe  _ it doesn’t matter, his blood is boiling. He is sick to death of keeping his head down, of ducking for people like fucking Larry Price and Eel and Brenner and Lonnie Byers. He recalls the sheer unfettered joy he felt breaking Mayor Kline's nose. He thinks of Sofie at the gas station, with her tinkling jewelry and knowing eyes, and the way she had called him impulsive. Jim can do that. Jim can do impulsive  _ real good. _

“Get  _ bent,  _ Larry Price, you stupid sack of  _ shit, _ ” he snarls, and charges full-force with his head and shoulders into Larry’s gut, shoving him into the brick wall. And God, does it feel good, the solid crack of Larry’s skull against the stone. The way Jim’s fist connects with his jaw. The blood from his lips slippery against Jim’s fingers. 

Until he notices that Larry is  _ laughing.  _

“I never knew you had it in you, Jimmy boy,” he chuckles, grabbing Jim by the shoulders and driving his knee up into his stomach. It takes Jim a moment to regain his breath, and a moment is all he needs - Larry is in his element, enjoying this, and cracks a powerful punch against Jim’s face. He turns with the swing and his eyes catch Joyce’s, all color drained from her face.

And the memory he had tried so hard to recall earlier - it fizzles in and out, like driving in range of another radio station, overlaid atop the current beating. Joyce’s face, looking so goddamn concerned for him, but so much older and wearier - standing in front of her house. She had come to Jim, the day before to ask about the divorce, and she didn’t really  _ tell him _ just how much of a shithead Lonnie was - but Jim is a decent detective and can put things together. So when he saw Lonnie drinking like a fish and hitting on the waitresses at the roadhouse, he decided to tail him home and throw him in the drunk tank. Teach him a little lesson.

What Jim failed to account for was that he was also loaded, in the middle of a months long bender, and maybe not in the best shape of his life. And out of uniform. Driving a civilian vehicle. So when he approached Lonnie Byers in his  _ own driveway,  _ drunkenly mumbling about blood-alcohol content and underaged waitresses - well. Lonnie was well within his rights to absolutely kick his ass. And he did.

The painful remembrance floats around him as he falls to the ground, fingernails scrabbling at the gravel for purchase. He can vaguely see Joyce flinging open the door to the kitchen, yelling for Benny to come out and help, before he feels Larry’s foot connect with his kidney.

He spews out a mouthful of blood as another thud wracks his body, half-noticing the molar that lands on the ground next to his face. His vision grows hazy and dim - from far away he hears Benny’s father’s voice booming from the doorway, hears the scuttle of Larry’s shoes as he hightails it out of there, laughing the whole way. The last thing he feels before he lets his eyes flutter closed is Joyce’s hand reaching for his, kneeling next to him. 

**the moon can represent our home or sense of belonging, relations with women** **  
** **being in opposition with uranus can cause one to feel out of place** **  
** **estranged from the self  
** **you can’t go home again**

“I just don’t know how to trust anything any more,” she whispers, speaking more to the air than to Jim.

“What do you mean?” He just got here, but the way his ass feels numb against the flat surface beneath him tells him that he’s been sitting like this for quite a while.

“I mean … Any of it.” Joyce, huddled under his arm, nestles her head against his chest. The sun finally comes to rest below the horizon as they lounge on the front steps of the bed and breakfast, clutching mugs of warm cider provided by their host. They had poured little nips of whiskey in them from a flask when old Mrs. Wagner had her back turned, unwilling to offend her Protestant sensibilities. “I watch people going about their days. Praying to God. Believing in the government. Working every day at these mundane little jobs. Planning their futures.”

“And? What’s so wrong with that?” He’s still shaken from the fight, from the monster eating Benny, from the merry-go-round of memories. The weight of her against his torso helps to ground him. He focuses on the up and down of her shoulders with each breath, trying to exist in this moment only. “Maybe some people need the mundanity - it gives them something to work for. A reason to get up in the morning.” 

“But they don’t  _ know.  _ Do you think they could do it - if they knew what we knew? Do you think they could go to church every Sunday if they’ve seen what we’ve seen? How can I believe in God if there are other worlds - other places full of hideous, evil things? What kind of God lets a man like Bob be eaten by demons? What kind of government,” her voice cracks slightly, tremulous with a quiet fury, “what kind of  _ men  _ would take you from me the way they did?” 

“I wake up sometimes, in the middle of the night and I - I grab for your hand. Just to make sure you’re still there. I get so  _ scared  _ that I’m going to lose you again, somehow. That I’m going to lose Will again. I feel so powerless. So angry.”

“Just promise me one thing, Joyce,” He stares into the darkening sky, watching the stars come into view, and takes a long sip of his drink. How unfair, he thinks to himself, that someone so kind should be so punished by life. He makes a pact with himself, here on these steps, to get things right this time. He won’t shut her out, won’t wrap himself so neck-deep in his demons that the only solution seems to be that leap into the river. “Promise me you won’t ever blame yourself. For Will. For me. For any of it.”

Any chance at an answer is drowned out by approaching laughter. A very raucous Max, all vibrant curls and careworn flannel, gesticulates wildly, El listening attentively to her story. Jim instantly feels out of place, surrounded by this simple Rockwell-hued happiness, and he stares helplessly at the swig of lukewarm cider pooled at the bottom of his cup. Being here with El leaves him self-conscious. He had missed so much of the girl’s life, leaving her as much a stranger to him as he was to her. 

“You’re back awfully early,” Joyce ventures, trying not to mar the excitement of the girls with the mood of their prior conversation.

“I just wanted to come back and change shoes. These new loafers are giving me  _ terrible  _ blisters,” El blurts quickly, before darting up the stairs and inside, before Jim has a chance to say anything at all. Max stands in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, regretting not taking the opportunity to follow her inside. She looks at Jim curiously, shiftily, trying to see without being seen.

“So. What are you girls up to this evening? Is Will with you?” Joyce asks, and Max brightens at the release in tension.

“We’re gonna go meet up with Will and Lucas at that corn maze. I hear if you go after dark they have a guy that dresses up and chases you with a fake chainsaw - really stoked. I think we’re going to the Wheelers' after, somebody said something about renting that Chucky movie.”

“I don’t want to be  _ that  _ Mom, but can you make sure one of them calls me when they get to the Wheelers'? I just - I get nervous. I care a little too much.” Jim squeezes her shoulder gently, rubbing his thumb against her arm and she shivers at the touch. If all mothers cared as much as Joyce does, the world would be a better place. They both jump when El bounds out of the door behind them.

“Don’t worry, I promise I’ll call,” she reassures them, already hustling out onto the sidewalk, a blur in a knee-length wool skirt and oversized sweater. She always moves so fast, so sure of herself. There was a time when she needed Jim - he wonders if that time will ever come again or if it passed him by while he was gone, like so many other things. Max stands awkwardly for a moment, chewing on her lip.

“Hey uh, Mr. Hopper?” She sighs and runs her hand through her hair, obviously unsure of what to call him. “I just wanted to say - I’m  _ really _ happy you’re back. That you’re okay, and stuff. We all are.”

“Thanks, Max.” He’s taken aback by the genuine show of affection. Max always seemed to be the boldest of the lot - he wonders if they chose her to make this statement, a representative of the Hawkins hive mind. “That’s really - it means a lot. Now please, go run off before El gets so impatient she explodes.” 

They sit in silence as the girls saunter down the sidewalk, Joyce casting a watchful eye until they’re out of view.

“A chainsaw, huh?” Joyce wonders aloud. “Why do you think they want to scare themselves like that, on purpose? You’d think after everything … I don’t know. I’ve had enough scares for one lifetime.”

Picturing the curvature of her lips wrapped around those cigarettes he rolled, leaning against each other under the bleachers so long ago, he smiles.

“Don’t you remember, Joyce? Teenage girls aren’t afraid of anything.”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops accidentally fell in love with Benny Hammond
> 
> [boy I did _not_ want to write Jim getting his ass beat. but it needed to be done.]


	6. take my heart, don't break my heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, I didn't totally abandon this after all. Just got sucked into playing around with an x-files oneshot and reading a _mountain_ of thick of it fic. Thanks to the handful of y'all keeping up with this - you're the real mvps.

**when uranus falls opposition to the natal moon** **  
** **all internal dependencies must be replaced**

Will calls them when he gets to the Wheelers', just like Joyce asked him to. He’s always been good like that, looking out for his mother almost as much as she looks out for him. They haggle out a curfew - settling for a firm 10:00PM. Which really means that they’ll straggle back at 10:30, Will half-sick with nerves, while El is all defiance and cool confidence. She doesn’t like rules, won’t listen to them one bit - and Jim never had the heart to blame her for it. Why follow the rules when it’s never gotten you a goddamn thing but lied to?

They could go out, theoretically - but it’s Hawkins. There isn’t really anywhere to go, and they’re both so tired all the time anyway. And Jim knows that he looks _different_ now, made-up of jagged edges. He doesn’t want to sit in some bar being gawked at by the yokels he used to throw in the drunk tank. There were rumors after that summer - the Chief of Police beat-up the Mayor, the mall got trashed, and then he just disappeared right before Joyce Byers ran off with her kids. They’ve been working on a story to tell people, something about an old war buddy of his dying of pancreatic cancer and Jim leaving to take care of him. But it’s flimsy at best and doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Besides - all he can think about is getting beat to shit by Larry and Lonny, and it has his nerves on edge. He’d like to just sit in this rented room with someone that makes him feel safe. It would be nice to let his guard down, if he’s even capable of it anymore. So they stay, drinking straight whiskey from their mugs, the cider long gone. 

The bedroom window creaks when she opens it and he smiles to himself when she tiptoes into the bathroom, a sweater and socks piled over her pajamas. She must be freezing - hell, she’s _always_ cold - but ever since Jim came back he’s found room-temperature to be ten degrees too high. So, he stands shirtless in a pair of flannel pants while she’s bundled up, because Joyce wants him to be comfortable more than she cares about herself.

They brush their teeth in the shared silence of a pair of longtime domestics - married in so many senses of the word. Except the legal one, he muses. Their lives have grown inextricably tangled, no way of telling where one ends and the other begins. He watches her openly, wondering if she knows how beautiful she is. She bends under the faucet to rinse her mouth, pulling her hair back with her hand and exposing the delicate shape of her neck. Something twists inside of him. When her eyes find his in the mirror, the corner of her lips quirk in a mischievous grin.

Jim hasn’t felt this in a long time - that same sensation he had looking at her in that ridiculous uniform, when they talked about Enzo’s, pretending that the world wasn’t about to end. That fire coiling in the pit of his stomach every time they got nose to nose to yell at each other. It’s not the teenage infatuation that rips the air from his lungs when he sees her in the hall - not the protective urge that swells when she can’t stop fidgeting with her hair, struggling to mouth the words ‘divorce lawyer’ - and it’s not the lofty, noble love that has kept them so bonded together these past few months.

In this moment, it is simple, base _want._ The feel of a man looking at a woman, all the trappings and layers of circumstance removed. His hands tremble when he reaches for her hips - she’s so pliant in response, fits so well against him, her hair tucked under his chin. He wonders if she can feel the hammering of his heart against his ribs. Their reflection is striking enough to give him pause - this slip of a woman, dwarfed by his bulky, scarred frame, standing tall against him all the same. Joyce had always been the fearless one.

She turns to him, ghosting her fingertips along his jaw, and he drowns in the black pools of her eyes. Tentatively, she asks, “Is this - okay?”

He nods, swallowing thickly, before bending down to bring his lips to hers. How could he have forgotten this? Nestled in this terrible weekend is the most glorious moment of his life - the first time he _really_ kisses Joyce Horowitz/Byers/Hopper. 

It’s another way that they _aren’t_ married. Consummation. It seems ridiculous from the outside - how close they are and _yet_. Surely the kids think they’ve done the deed, and they’re fine to let them draw their own conclusions. But there hasn’t been time. Things were too confusing in high school, and then she was married, and he was married too - until they weren’t. But then there was Bob, and they kept almost dying - and by the time they saw what was right in front of their faces he was gone.

When he came back, he was such a jumbled mess that it was simply out of the question. Joyce patiently and dutifully waited, giving him as much space as he needed. They’ve grown intimate yes - chaste, light brushes of lips on cheeks and foreheads. They sleep in the same bed and have seen each other in various states of undress.

But the way her mouth seeks his is entirely new. He marvels at the softness of her tongue and the way it tastes of toothpaste, how something so tremendous can be so _real._ It’s the crest of a wave that’s been building his whole life, and his chest aches with the realization. He’s been an absolute idiot. There were so many chances, so many times -

“Thirty years, Joyce,” He mutters, forehead resting against hers, breathless with the thrill of it all. “It’s taken me more than thirty years to do this.”

“I should have remembered,” she whispers, cradling her face into his shoulder. “If I had met you at Enzo’s - if I hadn’t stood you up -”

“Yeah, and if wishes were horses.” Tilting her head up, he forces her to meet his gaze. There’s a tearful sheen to her eyes, a contrast to the flush of her kiss-swollen lips. “Joyce. I’m serious. You can’t shoulder that kind of burden. Nobody can. I don’t blame you, for anything.” Her face brightens somewhat, and he’ll take that as a victory. For now. “Shut up, please. And let me kiss you like you deserve.”

True, this wasn’t how he pictured it - gentle and soft, in this stuffy bed and breakfast, Joyce shivering against some atrocious floral bedding when he finally peels off her sweater and the t-shirt beneath. As a younger man, when he allowed himself to imagine these things at all, they were pornographic and unsavory.

But the imperfect reality _is_ perfect. It is the most whole he has ever felt. He will carry with him forever the image of her serene smile, skin dappled with moonlight as she straddles him. How impossibly light her palms sit against his chest, and the gasp that shudders from between her lips. The warmth of her delicate breast against his calloused fingers nearly breaks him in two.

Maybe this is what the universe is trying to show him. All that there has ever been for him is Joyce, this thread of commonality woven through the fabric of his life. Joyce Horowitz with her liverwurst sandwiches and plaid dresses and Halloween parties. Joyce Byers who sat across his desk and demanded he find her son - who dragged him kicking and screaming from a years long downward spiral and turned him into some kind of hero. And one day, when their kids are grown and gone, she will be Joyce Hopper as well.

They lay awake after, waiting for Will and El to return, in a bubble of shared contentment. There is peace here, a sanctuary from the high-speed train wreck of the other _whens_. The quiet of this room and the perfection of the moment is a balm on his fractured soul. Curled into his side, Joyce traces an idle finger across the faded word scrawled into his chest. A memory tears into focus, hurtling through the pleasant mood. A man lies balled-up on the concrete floor of a cell, failing to protect himself with his hands as Jim kicks him. His bones hurt like hell, his mouth tastes of copper, and everywhere he turns is the echoing chant of _pindós_ while money and cigarettes change hands. In retrospect, it’s funny that a boy like Larry Price could ever best him, when so many men would fall to his hands in that hell-hole. It’s the only way he was able to survive - to ingratiate himself to the inmate population. Once they found out he could _fight,_ they welcomed him like a prized dog. He doesn’t remember all of it - not even close - but he has the sinking feeling that most of those fights didn’t end with surrenders.

It’s a stark reminder of how wrong he is here, with her. How much better than him she is.

When he sleeps he dreams of that ride at the fair, the one that’s shaped like a spaceship and spins. But it is empty this time, save for him and Joyce, and as the weightlessness takes hold she reaches for his hand.

 **the influence of uranus on neptune can be tricky to see outright** **  
** **a revolution can be ignited from the most obscure beginnings** **  
** **[did you do too many drugs too baby?]**

“I told ya’ already _man,_ I don’t fuckin’ know where Rose is at, alright? I ain’t seen her since last night, and she was with _you_ anyways!”

The blues in the bar is deafening, Edgar shouting at him over the ratty towel draped on his shoulder, pulling pints for the unruly crowd on either side of Jim. It takes him a moment to get his bearings, thrust from the blissful peace of his evening with Joyce into the chaos of Thursday night at The Roadhouse. The air reeks of sour beer, cigarette smoke and the stench of human sweat against leather. The noise is making his brain vibrate inside his skull.

“Besides - you shouldn’t even _be here._ Not after that shit you pulled with Lonnie last week. Don’t think he didn’t fuckin’ tell me. Tailing him back to his _house?_ I shoulda kicked you out for good, pig or not, man. Some cop you are anyway, still got skeezeballs hanging around in the lot tryna hock horse on my girls. But I guess that’s between you and Eel, huh? And I don’t figure into it, far as I can tell.”

He wants to leap over the bar and smash one of those pint glasses into Edgar’s chin, but he’s not wrong. The more time he spends here, the more he’s realizing just how much his implosion impacted everyone around him. There was a lot of collateral damage he didn’t notice through the pill haze. And that reminds him -

“Alright! Fine. Jesus, fuck. I’ll get out of your hair, Edgar. Promise. Won’t see me for two weeks at least,” he takes a balled-up twenty from his pocket, sliding it across the bar. Edgar looks at it, something akin to pity flickering across his face before he turns and opens the till, taking out a ziploc pouch full of little white tablets. Jim grabs the bag and turns to leave, but the bartender stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen, bud. I just - I seen some people go your way before and it ain’t pretty. You could have a decent life here, if you gave two shits. Take care of yourself, alright?” 

“Yeah, whatever. Thanks.” He mumbles under his breath, lurching out through the doors, past the parked bikes and the young couples sucking the air from each other’s lungs, out into the gravel parking lot and his truck. Thoughts swirl round and round in his brain, jumbled up and out of time. Larry Price. Benny when he was young and then Benny when he wasn’t. That strange creature from the diner. Joyce blushing while she chastises him for trying to fight her husband. An El who can’t look him in the eyes. A make-shift needle burrowing into his bicep, watching a man shove a spoon under his eyelid while he waits for a tattoo of his own. Joyce’s bare thigh draped over his, listening to the wind through the open window.

He reaches into the glove compartment and takes out a leather pouch, putting the bag of pills inside and taking out a smaller one in its place, half-full of white powder. It’s the same leather pouch he stored his tobacco and rolling papers in, once upon a time. The memory of that younger Jim, both far away and as fresh as this morning, fills him with melancholy and stale regret. Doesn’t stop him from taking a bump off the back of his hand, just the same.

So he can’t fix it all. But he _can_ try and solve one problem at a time. Unable to control _when_ he is, it’s prudent to focus on something here and now. Lonnie is something that Joyce needs to work through on her own. And the bug might not have even been _real,_ he could just be losing his mind. Which means the next pressing issue is finding his fucking gun.

His trailer is on the way to the motel, and the idea of a clean shirt and a quick freshening up calls to him. The front door sticks when he pushes it open, something jammed under it catching against the rug. Groaning, he bends down to find a crumpled envelope with his name and nothing else scrawled on it in an uneven hand. What’s inside of it makes him dry-heave.

A Polaroid of his gun, laying on some hideous green carpet next to a copy of today’s newspaper. A note on the back reads:

> $5000 cash  
>  behind the roadhouse  
>  noon tomorrow  
>  trick r treat  
>  nobody else or _else_

“Son of a fucking _bitch,_ ” he howls into the trailer, swinging his arm through the clutter of empty cans on the coffee table. He collapses on the couch uselessly, head in his hands, and wishes there was someone here he could _hit._ In lieu of a real victim, he settles for gripping the underside of the table and flipping it onto its side. It’s a stupid gesture - cleaning up after this little tantrum is going to be frustrating as all hell - but that is a problem for tomorrow’s Jim.

He changes his shirt in a flurry of rage, chugging a beer as he neatens himself, and hurls his body back into his truck and out to the motel. The proverbial walls of Jim’s life are closing in around him. The lack of foresight he’s been granted for each stretch of time he gets dumped into grows infuriating with each new development. If he could just fucking _see_ how he got out of this last time - if he could be granted one crumb of context or guidance - maybe he could fix things.

 _“Yeah, and if wishes were horses,”_ he remembers telling Joyce in a bathroom he hasn’t stepped foot in yet. But what’s the fucking point of all of this if he can’t do a damn thing about it? 

The buzzing hum of the neon motel sign welcomes him with open arms. This place on the outskirts of town, just outside of Hawkins proper, has always struck Jim as somewhere detached from reality. A man in a rumpled and filthy tuxedo lounges drunkenly in a chair by the pool, warbling the same three or four lines of "Moon River." Some of the long-term residents have decorated for the holiday with carved pumpkins beside their doors and paper cut-outs of black cats and ghosts taped to their windows. In one room a baby wails as Jim walks past, and he can hear the rhythmic thud of a headboard from inside another. It is a terrible, strange place, but perfect just the same. Because right now, what Jim needs is somewhere and someone just as low-down and grimy as he is.

And Rose, the way she answers her door with a bottle of bottom-shelf sparkling wine between her lips, a leopard print robe dangling from her shoulder, is this atmosphere personified. Her full name is Rose of Sharon Walker, but when she says it with her flat, scrubland Texas drawl it sounds like Rosasharn, and the only person who calls her _that_ is her mother. Rose of Sharon, because her mother was from Oklahoma and her people were ‘from the church.’ Looking at her here, bottle-blonde and thin as a rail, with more legs than anything else - he is struck by how much she isn’t Joyce.

He met her at The Roadhouse one night, with a sticky fumbling in the backseat of his truck, and then found himself coming back to her again and again. She’s a simple girl from one of those single stoplight towns in the panhandle, who never thought about much other than getting out. He wonders if she’d take it back, given the chance. If this peeling wallpaper and the grubby hands of the men she dances for are worth it, in the end. As crude and as brash as she is, she’s young and she’s _kind_. And maybe Jim never treated her as well as he should have.

“Oh _baby,_ you look like you went and got the whole darn world on your shoulders. What happened?” She croons, pulling him into the room and under her spell.

It’s such a relief to tell her - to sit on the sagging, worn-down mattress and swig cheap bubbles as he unloads it all. Not everything of course - he leaves out the time travel and the monsters and what will happen in the Hawkins-yet-to-come. But he tells her about his mom and his grandad and about the war. He talks about New York and Diane and Sarah, and how old he feels at thirty-eight. She pretends to understand, but how can she? She’s barely twenty-one herself, Jim thinks guiltily.

“And now, I’ve lost my gun! To top it all off, the cherry on this bullshit sundae, somebody stole my _gun_ and wants to sell it back to me for five fuckin’ grand!”

“Good lord, honey. How’d they manage that?” She calls out to him from the bathroom, rattling around in her purse. Something isn’t adding up right, because Rose was with him last night, Edgar and Benny both confirmed it. But she’s not proffering any explanation as to the gap in Jim’s memory.

“Yeah, about that. I was hoping - well, I thought you could tell me. Seeing as you were the last person who saw me, and all.” Rose tilts her head, a slight frown across her lips. Jim might not be a good cop _lately,_ but he was competent enough before. And everything about her body language is giving him pause. It all points to a _lie_.

“No, that’s not exactly true, though. We left The Roadhouse together, yeah, you drove me here. But you didn’t want to come in - you said you were tired and you went off home,” She sits down next to him and places a hand on his knee, the other palming two pills into his hand. He bristles at this and she rolls her eyes.“Relax, baby doll, it’s just a few little old aspirin. I know how that wine gets to giving you a headache and all.”

He reluctantly dry-swallows them, grimacing at the bitter film they leave on his tongue.

“Now, why don’t you just _pay_ whoever it is the money? You’ve been taking so much from Eel lately, I’m sure you’re good for it.” She pouts at him with her baby-blues, creeping her hand from his knee up along his thigh. It's an act - a frustrating one at that. He knows she's smarter than this. So why play dumb?

“Haven’t you been listening? I don’t _have_ any fucking money. That’s the problem. I’ve been using the payouts to try and cover that shit with my daughter.” But she’s not listening - not anymore. She’s straddling his lap, planting open-mouthed kisses along his throat and reaching for his fly. It’s distressingly easy to fall into this, to lean back and lose himself in the cloying smell of her drugstore perfume and the touch of her practiced hands.

It’s _too easy_ , he notices, as his eyelids droop and his hands go half-numb. There’s a distant alarm bell sounding off in his brain, something about the derelict green carpet of the motel room floor and how the aspirin was far too bitter. And to his horror, in the corner of the room something is _moving._ He can’t focus on it - Rose is doing her best to occupy his attentions elsewhere as his consciousness fades.

But he could swear it looks _just like_ the thing he saw on Benny. 


End file.
